Three Bedrooms, One Corpse

Chapter Twelve

LITTLE TASKS consumed the rest of my day. I had to stop by the dry cleaner’s and go to the grocery store with a list of ingredients for the supper I was going to cook Martin the next night. I did my laundry and a little ironing. I sent Amina and her husband a “congratulations” card and a copy of Dr. Spock’s famous book on baby care.

And I went by the library to check out some books. Every time I went into my former place of employment, I felt a pang of regret. There were so many things I missed about working there; seeing all the new books first (and free), having a chance to see and learn about so many people in the town I wouldn’t run across otherwise, the companionship among the librarians, just being in the presence of so many books.

What I didn’t miss was the companionship of Lillian Schmidt. So of course it was Lillian who was at the checkout desk today. I politely asked after Tonia Lee’s mother and got a blow-by-blow account of Mrs. Purdy’s collapse after the funeral and her continued depression, Mrs. Purdy’s relief on hearing there had been an arrest, Mrs. Purdy’s horror and disbelief on hearing who was being questioned, Mrs. Purdy’s confusion on hearing that there was no concrete proof against Jimmy Hunter.

“Oh, that’s great!” I said involuntarily.

Lillian was affronted. Her oversized bosom heaved under its striped polyester covering. “I just think it’s one of those technicalities,” she said. “I bet they’ll be sorry when some other woman gets killed in her bed.”

I forbore remarking that the bed Tonia Lee had been killed in was not exactly her own. “If someone else does die, it won’t be because Jimmy Hunter wasn’t arrested,” I said firmly if confusingly, and picked up my books.

By the time I got home and unloaded my car, it was a little after four, and becoming dark and colder. This was getting close to the time of day Tonia Lee had been killed. With no other car having been seen in the driveway, the police had thought Mackie might be involved, since he ran every evening at this time. I thought the theory was sound, even though they’d had the wrong person. This evening, I’d walk myself. Just to see what could be seen.

Twenty minutes later I was shaking my head and muttering to myself. The streets were practically teeming with walkers and joggers. I had had no idea that the residential areas of Lawrenceton were so busy at an hour I normally associated with winding down and preparing supper. Every other block, it seemed, I passed another walker, or a runner, or a biker. Sometimes two. Everyone in town was out in the streets! Arms swinging energetically, Walkmans (Walkmen?) fixed on ears, expensive athletic shoes pounding the pavement… it was amazing.

I was heading toward the Anderton house, of course, walking at as swift a clip as I could manage. I passed Mackie, running in a sweatshirt and gym shorts, pouring sweat in the chilly air; he gave me the quick nod that was apparently all that was expected of runners. Next I saw Franklin Farrell, keeping in trim for all those ladies, running at a more moderate pace, his long legs muscular and lean. No wonder he seemed so much younger than I knew he must be. True to his nature, he managed an intimate smile even through his careful breathing. Eileen and Terry marched by together, weights on their ankles and wrists, arms swinging in unison, not talking, and keeping a pace I knew would have me panting in minutes.

This was much more interesting than my exercise video. All these people, including half the real estate community, all out and about at the time the murderer must have arrived at the Anderton house. Even Mark Russell, the farm broker, strode by, in an expensive walking outfit from the Sports Kitter shop. And perfect Patty Cloud, bless my soul, in an even more expensive pale pink a silky-looking running suit, her hair drawn up and back into a perky ponytail with matching pink bow. Patty even jogged correctly.

And here came Jimmy Hunter on a very fancy bike.

“Jimmy!” I said happily. He pulled to a stop and shook my hand.

“Susu told me you came by yesterday when everyone else was staying away,” he said gruffly. “Thanks.”

“Are you okay?” I asked inadequately. He’d been through such an ordeal.

“I will be,” he said, shaking his head slightly as though a fly were circling it. “It’s going to be hard getting over this feeling that everyone was against me, that everyone believed I’d done it, right off the bat.”

“Susu okay?”

“She’s tired, but she’s regrouping. We have a lot to talk about. I think we’ll leave the kids with their aunt and uncle for a while.”

“I hope everything-” I floundered. “I’m really glad you’re home,” I finally said.

“Thanks again, Roe,” he said, and wheeled away.

Seconds later I was in front of the Anderton house, its Select Realty sign still stuck forlornly in the yard, doomed to be frosted and snowed upon all winter and covered with the quick grass of spring and the weeds of summer, I was sure.

I didn’t think the Anderton house, or the little ranch-style where we’d found Idella, would sell anytime soon.

After all, these deaths hardly seemed to be the work of a random killer, striking where he could find a woman alone.

I wondered if anyone had seen a car at the house where Idella’d been found.

A client arriving by foot would have been unusual, even unnerving: especially to Idella, who’d already been made nervous by Tonia Lee’s death, who’d already heard that the police suspected someone of arriving at the Anderton house on foot… surely she’d have run screaming from the house instantly?

Yes, if it had been a random client who called to set up an appointments But not if it had been someone she knew, someone who said, maybe, “My run (or my bike ride) takes me by there, so I’ll see you at the Westley house,” or something of the sort. And what more impersonal place to kill than someone else’s empty house? You could just leave the body where it fell. The killer hadn’t had a chance to divert suspicion, hadn’t had the opportunity to move Idella’s car somewhere else; since it had been dusk, not dark, when Idella had been murdered, her car couldn’t have been moved without the driver being seen. Idella had had to be silenced quickly or she would have told what she knew… and Donnie Greenhouse thought she knew who’d killed his wife.

There he was now, as if my thinking of him had conjured him up, alternately walking and jogging, dressed in ancient dark blue sweats. He was dangerously hard to see in the gathering dark. I could just make out the features of his face.

“Roe Teagarden,” he said by way of greeting. “What are you doing out tonight?”

“Walking, like everyone else in Lawrenceton.”

He laughed without humor. “Decided to join the crowd, huh? I come here every evening,” he said with an abrupt change in tone. “I come stand here while I’m out running. I think about Tonia Lee, about what she was like.”

This was weird.

A car went by, its headlights underlining the suddenly increasing darkness. I had a rather long walk home. I began to shift my feet uneasily.

“She was quite a woman, Roe. But you knew her. She was one of a kind.”

That was the absolute truth. I was able to nod emphatically.

“Everyone wanted her, and not just men, either; but she was my wife,” he told me proudly. His words had the feeling of a mantra he’d chanted over and over.

My scalp began to crawl.

“She’ll never cheat with anyone else again,” Donnie said with some satisfaction.

“Um, Donnie? Do you think it’s really that good for you to keep on coming over here?”

He turned to me, but I couldn’t see his face well enough to discern his expression.

“Maybe not, Roe. You think I should resist the temptation?” His voice was mocking.

“Yes,” I said firmly. “I think so. Donnie, why didn’t you tell the police what you and Idella talked about that day at the restaurant?”

“So that’s how they knew. Idella talked to you in the women’s room.”

“She told me you were saying you saw her car come out of your office parking lot.”

“Yeah. I was out looking for Tonia Lee. So I cruised by the office. Sometimes she would take people there if she couldn’t find anywhere else.”

“Was Idella driving?”

“I couldn’t tell. But it was her car. It had that MY CHILD IS AN HONOR STUDENT AT LCS bumper sticker.”

“You can’t believe that Idella killed Tonia Lee.”

“No, Roe, I’ve never believed that. But I think she gave a ride home to whomever left Tonia Lee’s car at the office. And I think I know who that was.”

“You should tell the police, Donnie.”

“No, Roe, this is mine. My vengeance. I may take my time about it. But Tonia Lee would have wanted me to avenge her.”

I drew in a deep, cautious breath. The conversation could only go downhill from here. “It’s really dark, Donnie. I’d better go.”

“Yes, don’t get caught alone with someone you don’t know very well.”

I took a tiny step backwards.

“And don’t go into houses with strangers,” he added, and ran away, the measured thud of his Reeboks fading into the distance.

I headed in the opposite direction. I would have gone that way even if it hadn’t been the way home.

I walked back to the townhouse more quickly than I’d set forth. It was too dark to be out by now, and my brown coat rendered me invisible to cars. I hadn’t prepared very well for my walk, and I was unnerved by my encounter with Donnie. I pulled my keys out when I neared the back of my town-house-I’d automatically walked into the parking lot instead of going to my closer but seldom-used front door. The lighting back here was good, but I glanced around carefully as I approached my patio gate.

I caught a little movement, from the corner of my eye, back by the dumpster in the far corner of the lot.

There weren’t any strange cars parked under the porte cochere. All the vehicles belonged to residents. I stared into the dark corner where the dumpster squatted. Nothing moved.

“Is anyone there?” I called, and my voice was disgracefully squeaky.

Nothing happened.

After a long moment I very reluctantly turned my back, and moving quicker than I had on my walk, I raced through my patio and turned the key in the back door, closing and shutting it behind me with even greater rapidity.

The phone was ringing.

If the caller had been Martin, I probably would have told him how scared I was. But it was my mother, wanting to know the news about the police questioning of Jimmy Hunter. I talked with her long enough to calm down, carefully not mentioning why I was so breathless. I hadn’t really seen anything, and if I possibly had seen just a tiny movement, what I’d glimpsed was a cat prowling around the dumpster in search of mice or scraps. There was, it was true, a murderer at large in Lawrenceton, but there was no reason on earth to believe he or she was after me. I knew nothing, had seen nothing, and was not even in real estate.

But the feeling of being observed would not leave, and I wandered restlessly around the ground floor of the townhouse, making sure everything was locked and all the curtains and shades were drawn tight.

Finally, after telling myself several times in a rallying way that I was being ridiculous, I went upstairs to change. Even in the cold, I’d sweated during my walk. Normally, I would have taken a shower, but this night, I could not bring myself to step in the tub and close the shower curtain. So I pulled on my ancient heavy bathrobe, a thick saddle blanket of a robe in green-and-blue plaid, the most comforting garment I have ever known.

It didn’t work its magic. I found myself scared to turn on the television for fear the noise would block out the sounds of an intruder. But nothing happened, all evening. I was caught up in some kind of siege mentality; I got a box of Cheez-Its and a diet Coke and holed up in my favorite chair, with a book I’d read many times, one of William Marshall’s Yellowthread Street series. But even his endearingly bizarre plotting could not relax me.

I wondered if men had evenings like this.

The time passed, somehow. I turned on my patio and front door lights, intending to leave them burning all night. I switched off the interior lights. I went from window to window, sitting in the dark and looking out. I never saw anything else; about one o’clock, I heard a car start up somewhere close and drive away. Though that could have signaled any number of things, perhaps none of them concerning me, I was able to sleep in fits and starts after that.

Chapter Thirteen

IT WAS RAINING Friday evening when Martin came to supper. He had barely shed his raincoat when he gathered me up in his arms.

“Martin,” I whispered, finally.

“Humm?”

“The water for the spaghetti is boiling over.”

“What?”

“Let me go put in the spaghetti so we can eat. After all, you need to build up your strength.”

Which earned me a narrow-eyed look.

I can never manage to get all the elements of a meal ready simultaneously, but we did eventually eat our salad and garlic bread and spaghetti with meat sauce. Martin seemed to enjoy them, to my relief. While we ate, he told me about his trip, which seemed to have consisted mainly of small enclosed spaces alternating with large enclosed spaces: airplane, airport, meeting room, dining room, hotel room, airport, airplane.

When he asked me what I’d been doing, I almost told him I’d sat up last night afraid of the bogey man. But I didn’t want Martin to think of me as a shaking, trembly kind of woman. Instead, I told him about my walk, about the people I’d seen.

“And they all had a chance to kill Tonia Lee,” I said. “Any one of them could have walked up to the house in the dusk. Tonia Lee wouldn’t have been too surprised to see any one of them, at least initially.”

“But it had to have been a man,” suggested Martin. “Don’t you think?”

“We don’t know if she’d actually had sex,” I pointed out. “She was positioned to look like it, but we don’t have the postmortem report. Or she could have had sex, and then been killed by someone other than her sex partner.” Martin seemed to take this conversation quite matter-of-factly.

“That would assume a lot of traffic in and out of the Anderton house.”

“Doesn’t seem too likely, does it? But it could be. After all, the presence of a woman wouldn’t scare Tonia Lee at all. And Donnie Greenhouse said several very strange things last night.” I told Martin about Donnie’s remark that not only men had wanted Tonia Lee, and about his sighting of Idella’s car. But I didn’t say anything about Eileen and Terry; just because they were the only lesbians I knew about in Lawrenceton didn’t mean they were the only ones in town.

Aubrey would have been nauseated by this time.

“So what’s your assumption?” Martin asked.

“I think… I think Tonia Lee learned who was stealing those things from the houses for sale. I think she was having an affair with whoever it was, or he-or she-seduced her when she asked him to come to the Anderton house to talk about the thefts. Maybe he asked her to meet him under the guise of having a romp in the hay there, when he meant to finish her all along. So they romp or they don’t, but either way he fixes it to look as if they had. I’m sure he planned it beforehand. He arrives by foot or bicycle, he kills Tonia Lee, he positions her sexually to make us think it’s just one of her paramours who got exasperated, he moves her car, he goes home, he somehow gets the key back to our key board. He thinks that that way no one will look for Tonia Lee for days, days during which all alibis will be blurred or forgotten or unverifiable. Maybe he returns the key in the few minutes Patty and Debbie are both out of the front room at the office.”

Martin had been listening quietly, thinking along with me. Now he held up his hand.

“No,” he said. “I think Idella must have put back the key.”

“Oh, my God, yes. Idella,” I said slowly. “That’s why he killed her. She knew who had had the key. She got it from whoever was at Greenhouse Realty.”

That made so much sense. Idella, crying at the staff meeting right after Tonia’s body was discovered. Idella, red-eyed and upset during the days after the killing.

“It must have been someone she was incredibly loyal to,” I murmured. “Why wouldn’t she tell? It would have saved her life.”

“She couldn’t believe it, she wouldn’t believe this person did it,” Martin said practically. “She was in love.”

We stared at each other for a minute.

“Yes,” I said quietly. “That must have been it. She must have been in love.”

I thought of Idella after Martin fell asleep that night. Deluded in the most cruel way, Idella had died at the hands of someone she loved, someone of whom she could believe no evil, no matter how compelling the evidence. In a way, I thought drowsily, Idella had been like me… she’d been alone for a while, coping with her life on her own. Maybe that had made her all too ready to trust, to depend. It had cost her everything. I prayed for her, for her children, and finally for Martin and me.

I must have coasted off into sleep, because the next thing I was aware of was waking. I woke up just a little, though; just enough to realize I’d been asleep, just enough to realize something unusual had roused me.

I could hear someone moving very quietly downstairs. Martin must be getting a drink and doesn’t want to disturb me-so sweet, I thought drowsily, and turned over on my stomach, pillowing my face on my bent arms. My elbow touched something solid.

Martin.

My eyes opened wide in the darkness.

I froze, listening.

The slight sound from downstairs was repeated. I automatically reached out to the night table for my glasses and put them on.

I could see the darkness much more clearly.

I slid out of bed as silently as I could, my slithery black nightgown actually of some practical use, and crept to the head of the stairs. Maybe it was Madeleine? Had I fed her before we came up to bed?

But Madeleine was in her usual night place, curled on the little cushioned chair by the window, and she was sitting up, her head turned to the doorway. I could see the profile of her ears against the faint light of the streetlamp a block north on Parson Road, coming in through the blinds.

I glided back to the bed, very careful not to stumble over scattered clothes and shoes.

“Martin,” I whispered. I leaned over my side of the bed and touched his arm. “Martin, there’s trouble. Wake up.”

“What?” he answered instantly, quietly.

“Someone downstairs.”

“Get behind the chair,” he said almost inaudibly, but very urgently.

I heard him get out of bed, heard him-just barely heard him-feeling in his overnight bag.

I was ready to disobey and take my part in grabbing the intruder-after all, this was my house-when I saw in that little bit of glow from the streetlight that Martin was holding a gun.

Well, it did seem time to get behind something. Actually, the chair felt barely adequate all of a sudden. I left Madeleine right where she was. Not only would she very probably have yowled if I’d grabbed her, but I trusted her survival instincts far more than mine.

I strained as hard as I could to hear but detected only some tiny suggestions of movement-maybe Martin going to the head of the stairs. Despite the dreadful hammering of my heart, I said a few earnest prayers. My legs were shaking from fear and the cramped crouching position I’d assumed.

I willed myself to be still. It worked only a little, but I could hear some sounds coming up the stairs. This intruder was no skilled stalker.

I found I was more frightened of what Martin might do than I was of the intruder. Only slightly, though.

I heard the someone enter the room. I covered my face with my hands.

And the lights came on.

“Stop right there,” Martin said in a deadly voice. “I have a gun pointed at your back.”

I peeked around the chair. Sam Ulrich was standing inside the room with his back to Martin, who was pressed against the wall by the light switch. Ulrich had a length of rope in one hand, some wide masking tape in the other. His face was livid with shock and excitement. Mounting my stairs must have been pretty heart-pounding for him, too.

“Turn around,” Martin said. Ulrich did. “Sit on the end of the bed,” Martin said next. The burly ex-Pan-Am Agra executive inched back and sat down. Slowly I got up from my place behind the chair, finding out that during those few moments I’d spent there, my muscles had become strained and sore from the tension. My legs were shaking, and I decided sitting in the chair would be a good idea. My robe was draped over the back of it, and I pulled it on. Madeleine had vanished, doubtless irritated at having her night’s sleep so rudely interrupted.

“Are you all right, Roe?” Martin asked.

“Okay,” I said shakily.

We stared at our captive. I had a thought. “Martin, where did you park when you came tonight? Are you in your car?”

“No,” he said slowly. “No, I parked out back in one of the parking slots, but I’m in a company car. I don’t like to leave my car parked at the airport.”

“So he didn’t know you were here,” I observed.

Martin absorbed that quickly. From looking perplexed and angry, his expression went to murderous.

“What were you going to do with the rope and the tape, Sam?” he asked very quietly.

I felt all the blood drain from my face. I hadn’t followed through on my own idea until Martin asked that critical question.

“You son of a bitch, I was going to hurt you like you hurt me,” Sam Ulrich said savagely.

“I didn’t rape your wife.”

“I wasn’t going to rape her,” he said, as if I weren’t there. “I was going to scare her and leave her tied up so you’d know what it was like to see your family helpless.”

“Your logic escapes me,” Martin said, and his voice was like a brand-new razor blade.

I knew this was a quarrel between the two men, but after all, it was I who would have been tied up.

“Didn’t you feel it might be a little cowardly,” I said clearly, “to creep up in the dark and tie up a woman who wasn’t even your real enemy?”

It seemed Sam Ulrich had never put it to himself quite that way. He turned even redder in a slow, ugly way.

“I’d like to kill you,” Martin said very quietly. I didn’t doubt his sincerity, and I could tell from the hunch of his shoulders that Ulrich didn’t, either. Martin, even in pajama bottoms, had more authority than Sam Ulrich would have had in a suit. “But since it’s Roe’s house you broke into, and her you were going to harm, maybe she should decide what should happen to you.”

I knew that Martin would kill this man if I asked him to.

I thought of calling the police. I thought of cops I knew from having dated Arthur, perhaps even Arthur himself, up here in my bedroom looking at me in my black nightie. I thought of their eyes as they found out Martin and I had been asleep together when I heard someone downstairs. I thought of the report taken from the police blotter that appeared daily in the Lawrenceton Sentinel. Then I thought of letting this dreadful coward go scot-free. But my flesh crawled when I pictured myself alone here with this frustrated man and his rope and his tape.

And I’ll tell you what I just plain liked about Martin. He let me think. He didn’t say one word, or look impatient, or even make a face.

“Do you have a wife?” I asked Sam Ulrich.

“Yes,” he mumbled.

“Children?”

“Two.”

“What are their names?”

He looked more and more humiliated. “Jannie and Lisa,” he said reluctantly.

“Jannie and Lisa wouldn’t like to see their father’s name in the paper for attacking an unarmed woman in her home.”

I thought that between anger and humiliation he might cry.

I got a pen and a notepad from my bedside drawer.

“Write,” I said.

He took the pen and paper.

“Date it.”

He wrote the date.

“I am dictating this now. Start writing,” I told him. “I, Sam Ulrich, broke into the townhouse of Aurora Teagarden tonight…” His hand finally moved. When it stopped, I continued. “I had with me some rope and masking tape.” Done. “She was asleep in bed with all the lights out, and I did not know anyone was in the townhouse with her.” His fingers moved even slower. “I was only prevented by her house guest from doing her harm. If I do not abide by the conditions she sets forth, she will send this letter to the police, with a copy to my wife.” And as he finished writing, I told him to sign it.

He waited to hear my conditions.

“What I want to see is your house up for sale tomorrow, and for God’s sake don’t list it with Select Realty. And I want you out of here, moved, family and all, within the week. I never want you to come back here, and I never want to see you again. You may not get a job like you’re used to, but anything, I think, would be better than being in jail for what you wanted to do to me.”

Martin’s face was blank.

Ulrich was so upset his features were distorted. I wondered if between rage, and relief, and shock, he would have a heart attack on the way home, and I found myself not much caring if he did.

“Martin, could you please walk Mr. Ulrich to his car?”

“Sure, honey,” Martin agreed, with a dangerous kind of smoothness. “Come on, Ulrich. You’re lucky I asked the lady. I would have put you in the hospital if it had been up to me.”

Or the morgue, I thought.

Sam Ulrich rose slowly. He took a step forward and then stopped. He was afraid to go closer to Martin. He was not such a fool as he looked. Martin moved back, and Ulrich preceded him down the stairs.

I heard the back door open and close, and wondered if I’d left it unlocked when we’d gone upstairs for the night. I didn’t think so. Not a very good lock. I’d get a better one.

Being left alone for a few minutes was a great relief, and I burst into tears and tried very hard not to picture myself at the mercy of the man now being marched to his car.

I was rinsing my face at the sink, the cold water making me shudder, when Martin returned. I saw his reflection in the mirror beside mine.

“You’ve been crying,” he said very gently, putting his gun on my vanity table, where it lay looking as out of place as a rattlesnake. I turned and put my arms around him. His bare chest was cold from the outside air, and I rubbed my cheek against him.

“He’s driving home,” he said, answering a question I was scared to ask.

“Martin,” I said, “if you hadn’t been here…”

“You would have called 911, because I wouldn’t have been between you and the phone,” he said practically. “They would have been here in two minutes, maximum, and you would have been fine.”

“So this doesn’t count as a rescue?” I asked shakily.

“We’re even on this one. You kept me from doing something stupid to him. I would hate to have to spend the night down at the police station because of Sam Ulrich. You saved his family, too.”

“Martin. Let’s just get in bed and pile all the blankets on, and you can hold me.”

I was trembling from head to toe. I realized, as I lay with my eyes wide open in the dark, that I had had to wait to find that Sam Ulrich had left in his own car-alive-before I could let myself have the luxury of relaxing, believing the incident was over. Martin was awake, too, listening. I didn’t think Ulrich was stupid enough to come back; he should be in his own bed counting his blessings.

I began to count my own.

At least Martin didn’t try to get to the plant early on Saturday, but he felt he should go in, especially since he’d been out of town. “I think my weekend hours will decrease now things are beginning to shape up at this plant,” he told me over our morning coffee, “especially now that I have a reason to stay away.”

I tried to smile back, but my attempt must have been miserable failure.

“Roe,” he said seriously, “it’s me that got you into the trouble last night, and for that I am so sorry. He wouldn’t have come here if it wasn’t for me. I hope you don’t hate me for that.”

“No,” I said, surprised. “No, never think it. I’m just tired, and it was very upsetting. And you know-you do have to tell me why you brought a gun when you came to spend the night with me.”

“I’ve had a hard life,” Martin said after a moment. “I have a job that requires me to do difficult things to other people, people like Ulrich.”

I closed my eyes briefly. This was all probably true, as far as it went. “All right,” I said.

“Do you think you’ll feel like going to that banquet tonight?”

I’d forgotten all about it. Of course, I wasn’t wild about going, but on the other hand, when I pictured my mother asking me why we hadn’t come, I just couldn’t come up with a believable excuse.

“I guess so,” I said unenthusiastically. “I’d rather drag myself there than think about last night.”

“Don’t forget to wear your hair up,” Martin reminded me later as he gathered all his things to stow in his company car. “What time should I come by?”

“I think cocktails start at six-thirty.”

“Six-thirty it is. Dressy?”

“Yes. Everyone can bring two other couples as guests, so there’s usually a decent crowd, and there’s a speaker.”

I was leaning on the door frame, and Martin was halfway to his car when he dropped the things he was carrying and came back. He held my hand.

“You aren’t off me because of last night?” He looked at me steadily as he asked.

I shook my head slowly, trying to analyze what I did feel, why things seemed so grim. “I just realized I’d taken on more than I’d anticipated,” I said, giving him the condensed version.

He looked at me quizzically. I was so tired that my judgment was impaired, and I went on. “You’re a dangerous man, Martin,” I said.

“Not to you,” he told me. “Not to you.”

Especially to me, I thought, as I watched him drive away.

I had completely forgotten to make an appointment to get my hair put up. Of course, all the hairdressers who were open on Saturday were fully booked. But with some wheedling and bribing, I got my mother’s regular woman to stay open late to work with my mane. I would be done barely in time for the dinner.

That suited me just fine. I climbed wearily up my stairs and went back to bed. It was becoming a habit.

When I woke again at two o’clock, the gray day didn’t look any more inviting, but I felt much better. I decided to cram the night before into a mental closet for the time being, to take some pleasure in going to a social function in Lawrence-ton with Martin for the first time. I was human enough to relish the anticipation of eyebrows lifted, of envious women. I was convinced any woman with hormones would want Martin.

I even turned on my exercise tape and got at least halfway through it before getting fed up with the dictatorial instructress. Madeleine watched me, as usual, her eyes round and disbelieving. She followed me upstairs for my shower, watched me put on my makeup and dry my hair. I changed my sheets, too, and ran a carpet sweeper over the bedroom hurriedly.

I would be running so short on time I decided to put on everything but the actual dress before I left for my hair appointment. So I looked through my closets. I’d wear the dress I’d worn the year before. Martin hadn’t seen it, even if everyone else had, and I’d only worn it that once. It was green, and after simple long sleeves and a scoop neck, the bodice descended to a point in front, and the short skirt flounced out in gathers all around. I’d have to wear black heels… I needed some of those shiny lame-looking shoes that were so popular now, but I didn’t have the energy or time to go shopping. Black would have to do. I had a little black evening purse, too. So I put on the right bra and slip and hose, and a dress that buttoned down the front over them.

I hurried out to my car and started across town to my mother’s hairdresser. I’d looked up an address before leaving home, and I took a little detour. There was the Ulrich house, a three-bedroom ranch style in one of Lawrenceton’s prettier middle-class neighborhoods.

And there was a FOR SALE sign in the yard.

Chapter Fourteen

“HOW DO you want it done?” Benita asked briskly. It was clearly the end of a long day for her. Her own red hair was wild and dark at the roots, and the beige-and-blue uniform all the operators at Clip Casa wore was rumpled and-well, hairy.

“Could you do it like this?” I’d spent my waiting time leafing through professional magazines.

“Yes,” Benita said briefly after a thorough look at the enigmatically smiling model, and set to work.

It was one of those hairdos with the braid miraculously inside-out. French braiding, I thought it was called. I’d never understood how that was done, and now it was about to be accomplished on my very own head. In the picture the model’s hair wasn’t pulled back tightly but puffed around her face. The length of hair at the base of the neck was also braided, and the model had a ribbon around the end. I had no fancy bows, but Benita had some for sale, including a gold lame one I thought would be pretty. I didn’t know if Martin would like the hairstyle, but it struck me as very fashionable.

Plus, it didn’t seem possible that my hair could come loose, as all too often happened when I put it up myself.

“Roe,” drawled a voice close by, and I recognized the apparition under the dryer as my beautiful friend Lizanne Buckley.

“I haven’t seen you in a coon’s age!” I said happily. “How are you doing?”

“Just fine,” said Lizanne in her slow sweet way. “And you?”

“Pretty good. What have you been doing?”

“Oh, I’m still down at the power company,” she said contentedly. “And I’m still dating our local representative.”

Lawyer J. T. (Bubba) Sewell, whom I’d met in a professional capacity, would be home from the Capitol for the weekend, and he and Lizanne were also going to the realtors’ banquet, she told me. In fact, Bubba was the speaker.

“Are you two engaged?” I asked. “That’s what someone told me, but I wanted to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.”

Lizanne smiled. She had a habit of that. She was stunningly beautiful, and no slave to the bone-thin convention of female figures. She was just right. “Oh, I expect we are,” she said.

“Someone’s finally going to walk you down the aisle,” I marveled. Men had tried for years to marry Lizanne and she would have none of it, the world being the unfair place it is.

“Oh, I don’t think we’ll get married in a church,” Lizanne demurred. “I haven’t been in one since Mamma and Daddy died, and I don’t expect to go. I believe Bubba sees that as my only drawback, a politician’s wife not going to church.”

There was no possible response, and Lizanne didn’t expect any. I felt like someone who was walking over a familiar sunny beach, only to discover that it had changed into quicksand.

“I hear you’ve been dating that new man at Pan-Am Agra,” Lizanne said after a few minutes. Lizanne heard everything.

“Yes.”

“He coming with you tonight?”

I nodded until a sharp exclamation from Benita reminded me to hold still.

“I’ll be glad to meet him; I’ve heard a lot about him.”

I didn’t know if I wanted to hear or not. “Oh?” I said finally.

“He’s got everyone out there shivering in their shoes. There’s evidently been a lot of slack and some thieving, and he was sent in to be the man to get everything straight. He’s firing and moving around people and looking into everything.”

Lizanne reached back and turned off her dryer, lifting the hood to reveal a head covered with large rollers. She patted them to make sure her hair was dry, took one down experimentally, nodded. “Janie, I’m done,” she called to the beige-and-blue-uniformed beautician drinking a cup of coffee in the back of the shop. The phone rang, and Janie answered it. It was for Benita, one of her children with a household emergency, and with an exclamation of impatience, she ran to take the call. I noticed the whole time she talked, she worked on her hair with a comb she picked up from the counter; if Benita was standing, she was working on hair.

“I have a friend at the police station,” Lizanne said casually, standing by my chair and looking into my mirror. “Jack Burns-your good buddy, Roe-has decided that since no one has been killing realtors until now, the murderer must be someone new to town. Some of the detectives don’t agree, but since they questioned Jimmy Hunter and let him go, all kinds of people have been pressuring the chief of police to find someone else. Jimmy Hunter’s parents have got lots of friends in this town, and the arrest of someone else would take the suspicion off Jimmy for good. So I hear the police are going to make an arrest soon in the murders of those two women. They’re probably going to be taking someone in for questioning tomorrow.”

My eyes met Lizanne’s in the mirror. She was giving me a message. But I had to decipher it.

“My goodness, Lizanne Buckley!” exclaimed Benita, coming back at that inopportune moment. “Who told you that?”

“Little bird,” Lizanne said laconically, and wandered off to her beautician’s station, where she began to remove her own rollers, tossing them in one of the wheeled bins. Janie drained her cup and unhurriedly began helping Lizanne, whose easygoing attitude seemed to rub off on people. I remembered Bubba Sewell’s slow good-ole-boy manner and his sharp brain and decided (in a remote corner of my own brain) that he and Lizanne would make a most interesting couple.

But mostly I was trying to figure out what Lizanne had meant.

We’d been talking about Martin. Then she’d talked about the arrest. Surely she didn’t mean the police suspected Martin?

She had been letting me know Martin was going to be arrested. At the least, taken in and questioned.

I stared at the mirror as two spots of color rose to stain my cheeks. I was gripping the padded arms of the swivel chair with undue force.

“Honey, are you cold?” Benita asked. “I can sure turn up the heat.”

“Oh. No, I’m fine, thanks.”

Ridiculous. This was ridiculous.

The police had been wrong once. They were wrong again. Of course they were wrong again, I told myself fiercely. The thefts. They’d begun long before Martin had moved here.

But the murders, of course, had begun after.

I remembered my mother wondering what on earth Martin was doing looking at such a large house. Logically, a bachelor would be looking at a smaller place, not a virtual mansion like the Anderton house. The police might think he’d made an appointment to see the Anderton house because he wanted his handiwork found. Martin had been in town some weeks before I met him, long enough to meet Tonia Lee and Idella. Tonia Lee, who would go to bed with almost anyone, would undoubtedly have licked her chops when she met Martin. Idella, wispy, palely pretty, and lonely, would have been thrilled to meet someone who could pay such close and flattering attention to her.

Of course, that was what the police might think.

I shut my eyes.

“Are you okay, sweetie?” Benita was asking with concern.

“I’m fine,” I lied automatically. “Are we about finished?”

“Just about. Do you like it?”

“It’s different,” I said, startled enough to peek out from under my personal black cloud. “Gosh, I don’t look like me.”

“I know,” said Benita proudly. “You look very sleek and sophisticated. Just beautiful.”

“Gee,” I said slowly. “I do.”

“All you need to do is go home and put on your dress and some lipstick, and you’ll be ready to step out.”

I did need lipstick. And I needed some spine, too, I decided grimly. I wasn’t going to let these black thoughts overwhelm me. I knew Martin, on some level, knew him thoroughly.

I thought.

I paid Benita handsomely, and went home to slide into my green flouncy dress and put on some lipstick. I’m going to go and have a good time, I told myself. I’m going with a handsome, sexy man who considers me absolutely necessary. He might have wanted to kill nasty Sam Ulrich last night, but he wouldn’t have killed Tonia Lee and Idella. Absolutely not.

At least my inner turmoil wasn’t showing on the outside. When I looked in my bathroom mirror to put on my bronzy lipstick, I looked just as good as I had in the beauty shop.

I almost wished I’d polished my nails, but that would have been absolutely out of character; and with my hair put up, I hardly knew myself, as it was.

Instead of bustling around thinking of something to do, I sat on the ottoman in front of my favorite chair, my current book lying neglected on the table beside it. I decided to pop the dress on at the last second. It hung on the bathroom door, looking festive and fancy, mocking me. I stared into space and thought about Martin gone, Martin in jail, Martin on trial.

He was as necessary to me as he said I was to him.

When the doorbell rang, it actually surprised me. I pulled off my robe, pulled the dress over my head, and zipped it up in record time. I slid my feet into my high-heeled pumps and pulled myself together to answer the door, wondering vaguely why everything looked so funny.

Martin took in a deep breath when I opened the door. He looked down at me with some unreadable emotion.

“Do I look all right?” I asked, suddenly anxious.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Oh, yes.”

“Do you like the hair?” I asked nervously when he still stared.

“Yes… very much.” He finally stepped in so I could close the door against the cold. He was wearing a black overcoat, and his white hair was strikingly attractive.

Once again I had the unsettling feeling that he was grown up and I wasn’t.

“Where are your glasses?”

“Oh,” I exclaimed, “that’s why everything looked so funny.” In some relief, I found them on the little table beside my chair and popped them on. “I tried contact lenses,” I told him defensively, “but I’m one of those people who can’t wear them. They just drove me crazy.”

“I’m glad you wear glasses.”

“Why?”

“So no one else can see you with them off,” he said, and bent to give me a kiss on the cheek. His finger traced the line of my neck. I shivered. My fears abated now that I was with him. When I was close to him, I felt that Martin would not let himself be arrested.

“Come look in the bathroom mirror,” he suggested.

“What?”

“Just for a minute; come with me.”

“Is my hair coming down?” My hands flew up.

“No, no,” Martin said, and smiled.

So into the bathroom we went, and I looked at myself in the mirror, Martin’s face rising neatly above mine in the reflection. He pulled off his gloves, and his hand went into a pocket.

Suddenly I realized I should be absolutely terrified.

But if he wanted to kill me, he would. I took a deep breath, looking steadily at his eyes in the mirror, and from his pocket he pulled a little gray velvet box and set it on the counter. Gently and expertly he removed my earrings, plain gold balls, and opening the velvet box, he extracted gorgeous amethyst-and-diamond earrings and with no fumbling at all fixed them in my ears.

“Oh, Martin,” I said, stunned. I felt as if I’d put on my brakes at the edge of a precipice.

“Sweetheart, do you like them?” he said finally.

“Oh, yes,” I said, trying hard not to cry. “Yes, Martin. They’re beautiful.” My hands were shaking, and I clenched my fists so he wouldn’t notice.

“Didn’t you tell me November was your birthday?”

“Yes, it is.”

“And here it is November. I didn’t know which day, but I wanted to get you a present. I know topaz is your birthstone, but none I saw seemed warm enough to me. These look like you. If you didn’t know it, you look beautiful tonight.”

The stones glittered. The amethysts were rectangular and edged with small diamonds.

“I’m overwhelmed. Martin, I don’t know what to say.” I’d never spoken truer words.

“Tell me you love me.”

I looked into the mirror.

“I love you.”

“That’s all I wanted to hear.”

“Martin.”

His hand touched my cheek.

“Do you-?”

“Yes,” he said into my ear, kissing my neck. “Oh, yes. I love you.”

After a while he said, “Do we have to go?”

“Unless we want my mother coming here to find out what happened to me, yes.”

Actually, I needed a space to think, to calm down. If we stayed here, I certainly wouldn’t get it.

Talk about warring emotions. Someone loved me. I loved him back. He might be questioned tomorrow for murder. He’d given me the most romantic gift, the kind women wait a lifetime for. And I’d thought for a moment that he was going to strangle me.

Martin fetched my coat from the closet while I reexamined my earrings in the mirror. “Can you stop looking long enough to put on your coat?” he asked, laughing.

“I guess so,” I said reluctantly. The moment of terror was oozing out and filling up with delight. “Martin, what’s that clipped to your coat pocket?”

“Oh, a beeper. We’ve been having trouble with a particular man on the night shift. His supervisor is watching him tonight, and if he catches him stealing, he’s going to beep me so I can go have it out with the guy.”

In my now almost complete wave of euphoria, I did a Scarlett O’Hara and decided to think about the bad stuff later. Maybe I couldn’t put it off until tomorrow, but I could savor this minute, surely.

Martin and I were a little late, among the last to arrive. We picked glasses of white wine off the tray a waiter carried by. I spotted Lizanne and Bubba Sewell immediately. Lizanne did not hint in her greeting to me that she had given me a warning that afternoon. Maybe her liquid dark eyes rested on me a little sadly, but that was all. Bubba started one of those conversations with Martin designed to link them in the male network: he connected what he was working on as a representative with what Martin was trying to achieve at Pan-Am Agra, he told Martin that he could call him any time he wanted to “talk things over,” he illustrated his intelligence and grasp of Pan-Am Agra’s interests, and he implied that Martin was the best thing that had happened to the company since sliced bread.

Martin responded cautiously but with interest.

Lizanne told me how pretty my hair looked, and admired my earrings.

“Martin gave them to me,” I said proudly.

She looked worried for a minute, then properly complimented me and drew Bubba’s attention to them.

“Did you show them your ring?” he responded after a token remark.

Lizanne, with her lovely slow smile, held out her hand on which glittered a notable diamond. “My engagement ring,” she said calmly.

“Oh,” I said. “Oh, Lizanne, it’s beautiful.” I sighed, suddenly realized I was doing so, and tried to make it silent. “When’s the wedding?”

“In the spring,” Lizanne said offhandedly. “We’ve got to sit down with a calendar and pick a date. It depends on the legislature, and of course I have to give notice at my job.”

“You’re quitting work?” I didn’t mean to sound startled, but I was. What on earth would Lizanne do all day?

“Oh, yes. We’re going to be living in my house for a while, until Bubba’s career plans are finalized, but there’s a lot I need to do to it… and I’m bored with my job anyway.”

I hadn’t known boredom was a concept Lizanne understood. Also, Lizanne heard every bit of news in her job, since the power company was a place everyone had to go sooner or later, and she had the most amazing capacity to attract confidences. I would have supposed Bubba would want Lizanne right where she was.

“Congratulations, Lizanne,” I said quietly as Bubba drew Martin off to meet another Lawrenceton mover and shaker.

She bent down to kiss me on the cheek. “Thanks, honey,” she murmured. Then she whispered, “They’re going to take your friend in tomorrow for questioning. For sure. I’m not going to tell you how I know.”

That was why she was so popular. She never told how she knew. And she certainly hadn’t told her fiancй; otherwise, he wouldn’t be sucking up to Martin. He’d be avoiding him as though Martin were a leper.

“Thanks, Lizanne,” I said in almost as low a voice. Suddenly curious, I asked, “Why are you telling me?”

“You helped me the day my parents were killed.”

I nodded, and pressed her hand. I had never been sure Lizanne had been aware of my presence or my identity on that horrible day. She and I gave each other a look and drifted apart, and I strolled over to my mother, my wineglass clutched in a death grip.

“Where’d you get the earrings?” she asked instantly. “They’re gorgeous.”

“Martin gave them to me tonight,” I said numbly, turning my head from side to side so she could get the full effect, all the time wondering what I could do to prevent tomorrow from happening.

“He did?” Mother raised her perfect brows. “But you’ve only known each other such a short time!”

I shrugged.

“Oh, you have got it bad,” she said darkly. “But at least he does, too. They’re very nice, dear.”

“What are you admiring, Mrs. Queensland?” Patty Cloud, in her favorite pink, this time a rose shade, appeared at my mother’s shoulder, trailing a delicate cloud of expensive perfume and a staggeringly handsome date, some man from Atlanta she’d met at a Sierra Club meeting, she managed to let me know. I talked to them for a few minutes of stultifying conversation about white-water canoeing before Martin rescued me.

“How’d you get along with Bubba Sewell?” I murmured as we went to our places around the table.

“He’s on the rise,” Martin said thoughtfully. “I won’t be surprised if he makes U.S. Senate some day.”

“Really?” I tried not to sound skeptical.

“He’s doing everything right. A lawyer, but not a criminal lawyer. Comes from a local family with a clean record, worked himself through law school, practiced for a while before running, going to marry a beautiful wife who can’t possibly offend anyone. She’s planning to quit work and stay at home, producing the right picture, and I bet they have a baby before they’ve been married two years. It’ll look good on the campaign poster, a family picture.”

I tried to think about this, to care about Bubba’s career, all the while turning nonsensical schemes over in my mind. I should tell Martin. Then he could brace himself. Or run. (I staved that thought off.) I should not tell Martin, so he would show unfeigned surprise when the police came to Pan-Am Agra. I pictured Martin being taken from his office, his humiliation; at least the people who worked for him would see it as humiliation. I checked the rein on my imagination; surely the police could not arrest him without warning, on the little or no evidence they had. But still…

Of all the people I knew, the one best qualified to fend for himself was Martin. Why was I worrying?

I yanked myself out of this anxious silent yammering to introduce Martin to Franklin Farrell and his date, who were seated across from us. Franklin must have been calling his reserve list, the day he’d called me; maybe this woman had been next, in alphabetical order. She was in her late forties, remarkably well groomed and dressed. Physically she was a good match for the immaculate Franklin. She glittered in a hard way, and her practiced conversation aroused my instant distrust. Her name I didn’t catch, but she was full of glib comments that gave no clue to her character. She was playing up to Franklin in a rather desperate way, and I could tell they hadn’t been out together before. He was being courteously cool.

The meal was served, and I talked to Mackie on my left, and Martin on my right, and Franklin and Miss Glitter across the way, though what I said I couldn’t have told you afterward.

Even through the worry, I could tell Martin and I were attracting a certain amount of attention. The tables had been arranged in a large U. Martin and I were seated on the outside of one arm of the U, and as Franklin bent to retrieve his lady friend’s napkin, I realized someone across from us at the far side of the U’s other arm was staring. With some amazement, I recognized my former flame Arthur Smith sitting with his wife, homicide detective Lynn Liggett Smith. Who on earth had invited them? Arthur was looking at me with all too apparent concern, his fair brows drawn together and his fingers drumming on the table. Lynn was eating and listening to Eileen Norris, who had come in with Terry, announcing to the room at large that the single ladies had just decided to come together.

I raised my eyebrows very slightly, and Arthur looked down, flushing red.

I knew then that Lizanne was right. Martin was under suspicion. Perhaps I hadn’t been quite sure Lizanne had gotten the true word before, but I knew it now.

“Are you all right?” Martin asked me.

“I’m all right. I need to-” I started to say “talk to you later,” but what an irritating thing that is to do to someone. “I’m fine,” I said clearly. “Do you like this salad?”

“Too much vinegar in the dressing,” he said critically, but his sharp look told me he knew something was in the wind.

Somehow I did the right things through the meal, but when Bubba got up to make his address about new legislation for the real estate industry, I was able to tune out completely. In fact, it was hard to keep my eyes aimed in the right direction. I gnawed at my problem, poked at my fear, which was like a monster with many faces; I was afraid of Martin’s getting arrested, afraid of losing him, afraid of what it would do to his job and self-esteem to be questioned at the police station; and maybe afraid he was guilty.

My eyes traveled across the faces around the Carriage House’s elaborate wine-and-cream banquet room. All these faces, almost all familiar. One of these people was most probably the person the police really wanted, if I could just make them see it.

The murderer was a realtor, or connected with realty in some way-someone who’d known how to get the key replaced.

The murderer had been able to arrive at the Anderton house without a car and had been part of the scenery while doing so-someone who ordinarily walked or jogged or biked in the evening.

The murderer had to be someone Idella Yates trusted, someone she’d been willing to risk a lot for, since it seemed pretty certain Idella had replaced the key.

I looked at Mackie’s dark neck as he turned his face politely to the speaker. His date beyond him was picking at her nails, though she, too, was keeping a courteous face turned in the right direction. Across the room, Eileen was dabbing her lips with her napkin. Beside her, Terry, in a dark blue dress with big fake diamond buttons, was listening to Bubba with a skeptical lift to one corner of her mouth. Mark Russell and his wife were sitting with the practiced posture of those who listen to many speakers; his partner, Jamie Dietrich, a lanky man with a huge Adam’s apple, stifled a yawn. Patty was all attention, though her date was doing something surreptitious under the tablecloth that brought a tiny secret smile to her face. Even young Debbie Lincoln, more beads woven into her hair than I would have thought possible, was turned to Bubba and trying to pay attention, though her date was openly, elaborately bored. Conspicuously alone, Donnie Greenhouse had deliberately left an empty chair beside him to remind people that he was a brand-new widower. Somehow I’d known he wouldn’t miss an opportunity to star in a public drama, even if he had to point it out himself.

Close to Lizanne, my mother inclined her head regally to one side, her resemblance to Lauren Bacall especially pronounced. John was resting his arm on the back of her chair. John looked ready to go home. Across the table from Martin, Miss Glitter appeared riveted. Franklin was listening with slightly drawn mouth, his long, thin hands arranging and rearranging his cloth napkin.

He pleated it, unpleated it. I returned my eyes to Mackie’s neck, prepared to plunge back into my fears and my dreadful burden of love. Then my attention shot back to Franklin. He pleated, unpleated. Then he folded the napkin into neat triangles, triangles that got smaller and smaller but never less neat. His long white fingers smoothed the napkin out. Then he pleated it. Then again, the triangles. Meticulously neat triangles. Where had I-?

His eyes began to turn toward me, and I instantly looked forward, my heart thumping.

Through no great feat of ratiocination, I, Aurora Teagarden, had solved a mystery.

Franklin Farrell was the murderer.

He was folding and refolding his napkin in the same curious way Tonia Lee’s clothing had been treated. It was as unmistakable as a fingerprint.

Franklin Farrell.